Quotes from Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson was our 3rd President of the United States. He was a Democratic Republican or Jeffersonian Republican.

Thomas Jefferson said: "A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have."

“If once the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions.”

“The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.”

“Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms (of government) those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.”

“We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

“Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.”

“To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness, the general mind must be strengthened by education.”

“I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us that the less we use our power the greater it will be.”

“Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people.”

“Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government...”

“Never spend your money before you have earned it.”

“No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.”

“Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.”

"Every society has a right to fix the fundamental principles of its association, and to say to all individuals, that if they contemplate pursuits beyond the limits of these principles and involving dangers which the society chooses to avoid, they must go somewhere else for their exercise; that we want no citizens, and still less ephemeral and pseudo-citizens, on such terms. We may exclude them from our territory, as we do persons infected with disease."

"The excellence of every government is its adaptation to the state of those to be governed by it."

"Anarchy [is] necessarily consequent to inefficiency."

"I own I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive. It places the governors indeed more at their ease, at the expense of the people."

"The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest."

"With all [our] blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow citizens--a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities."